The Napoleon of Crime (33 page)

Never suspecting that Worth might have other reasons to keep the picture and knowing he was not likely to be contradicted, the author gave full rein to his imagination: “Every now and then the picture, buried beneath some heap of rubbish, would rise up in his memory and cause him severe qualms, for the possession of it was a standing menace to his safety … he tried to forget the picture’s existence, willing to neglect it, yet loath to destroy anything so potentially valuable.”

Not surprisingly, the story prompted what we would now call a “feeding frenzy,” and the
Pall Mall Gazette
’s report was reproduced in newspapers and magazines throughout the country. Some were doubtful. “
Nothing is said in the account of the present whereabouts of the painting,” noted
The Daily Telegraph
, and “until that information is forthcoming there will be sceptics.” The
Bath Herald
agreed: “
Messrs. Agnew, no doubt, will believe in the truth of the story when they have their picture back.”

Another writer in the
New York Sun
, cranking up his prose to near erotic levels, fantasized that Worth had stolen the portrait “
to worship” the sexy duchess in secret. The anonymous writer was not so wide of the mark, but realizing he might be in danger of overdoing things, he suddenly concludes, on the basis of no information whatever, that Worth “
had used the dastard knife for the mere sake of loot. A guerdon of dross, and not the gratification of unholy but artistic passion, was to be his reward.”

The
Manchester Courier
suggested “
the story may or may not be true but it is not an improbable yarn” and wondered whether Worth, if he was indeed the thief, was also a romantic “
haunted during sleepless nights in gaol by visions of the lovely face of the stolen ‘Duchess’,” who might now “
unburden his mind” and relieve his conscience by agreeing to return it. “
As the felon has been a sort of artist in his own line, perhaps he has some respect for the artistic achievements of nobler men.”

Worth
was
both haunted and burdened by the
Duchess;
he
was
an artist, in a way, but he had absolutely no intention of returning the painting. Trapped, increasingly infamous, and irritated that he had been so incautious when dealing with Marsend, Worth granted only one interview in the wake of the
Pall Mall Gazette
furor, to a local paper, the
Indépendence Belge
, in which he claimed the whole thing had simply been a joke on his part. Worth insisted that,

in the course of the interview Marsend began to talk of the famous painting which was stolen 17 years ago, [and] seeing the interest which his visitor took in the affair [he] thought it would be interesting to “green him up” and accordingly told Marsend that he knew the receivers of the picture; and himself possessed in England a reduced copy of it.

He pretended to be vastly amused that Marsend, and
The Pall Mall Gazette
, had believed his story. Indeed, he went into “
fits of laughter” for the benefit of the Belgian interviewer, and “his laughter was apparently sincere.” It was an elaborate bluff, and the journalist for the
Independence Belge
fell for it. “
It seems certain,” the paper reported, “that the
Pall Mall’s
story is the result of a hoax, pure and simple; that the secret of the famous picture is not at Louvain; and that the art world must renounce its newly awakened hope of seeing again one of the most admirable masterpieces of English painting.”

But not everyone was so convinced. “
I still retain the belief that Worth has control of the Gainsboro’,” Robert Pinkerton wrote to his brother.

The
Gazette
, in true Fleet Street tradition, defended its story in the very next edition. “
Certain newspapers, although availing themselves in their news columns of the benefit of our article on Adam Wirth … have, nevertheless, discovered in our report indications that the confession is not to be relied on.” C. Morland Agnew, William’s son, was interviewed and acknowledged that the convict Worth was indeed the prime suspect. “
The firm have recently had negotiations with people acting on Wirth’s behalf with a view to the restoration of the painting,” the
Gazette
recounted, “and those negotiations are still pending.” Bending the truth more than a little, the younger Agnew claimed: “
We could have had the picture back several times since the theft,” but for a high-minded refusal to contemplate getting the portrait without the thief. “
The negotiations for the return of the picture never included the delivery of the thief into custody. We could not think, of course, of continuing negotiations of that sort,” Morland protested, falsely.

William Agnew himself feigned insouciance when asked about the
Pall Mall Gazette
account, but the entire Gainborough episode still rankled, partly because it was still costing him money. Just a few years earlier, in 1887, he had been forced to make good on his debt of 1,500 guineas to the engraver Samuel Cousins when the latter died, even though the Gainsborough “
was never engraved after the painting was stolen.”

“
There may be some truth in the rumor … but personally I know nothing whatever of the matter,” he told the
New York Sun
, which then noted that “Mr. Agnew expressed a column with a shrug.” After so many false alarms, the art dealer reportedly “
heard the news with the calm indifference of a man who sees an old friend in a summer suit.” But Messrs. Agnew were neither calm nor indifferent. Indeed, the
Gazette
story and its aftermath had led to a fresh flurry of activity in Old Bond Street and Scotland Yard as a series of more or less shady characters emerged out of the woodwork, some of them former associates of Worth, claiming to be able to broker a deal with the convict. In William’s words: “
Mysterious men came to me and said, ‘We think we can lay our hands upon the painting,’ but invariably wound up with a request for £20, or £50, ‘just to cover the initial expenses of inquiry.’ ” Marsend even tried to capitalize on his scoop and once more “
made an application to the authorities in Belgium for permission to have an interview with the convict Wirth, but the authorities declined to grant this permission without Mr. Marsend producing to them an authority from Mr. Agnew that such interview was desired by him.” Another man, by the name of McLeod, also offered to act as a go-between, for a consideration. This McLeod, Morland Agnew reported back, claimed “
he was Wirth’s associate and … knows all about the picture and is agitating now in order to get money to assist Wirth.” McLeod was sent packing.

Throughout 1893, the letters hurtled back and forth between Scotland Yard, Agnew’s, and the various lowlifes scenting a scam. They got nowhere; Worth categorically refused to discuss the matter. Sticking to his story that the whole thing had been a misunderstood prank on his part, he refused to be interviewed by Marsend, McLeod, the Belgian authorities, Sir George Lewis, “
or by anybody else”—a position he resolutely adhered to for the remainder of his sentence. “
Nothing could be done by anyone,” an Agnew’s official complained.

Late that summer, Superintendent Shore came to visit Morland Agnew at the Piccadilly gallery, in a somber mood. “
Undoubtedly the picture was about and might be recovered,” he told the dealer, but not without cooperation from Worth himself. “He said that the authorities had known for some time that the man Worth, now in prison, was the thief,” Agnew wrote, “but that it was quite impossible for the police to bring any real proof, nor could the police proceed against anybody who was in possession of the picture as being in possession of stolen goods. The robbery was some 17 years ago and it would be quite impossible to proceed against anybody.”

Worth could not be forced to surrender the painting, only persuaded, Shore explained. “
There was nothing to be done.”

For the Victorian press and public, the image of a master criminal at bay refusing to surrender his last remaining symbol of wicked power was a piquant and powerful one. The
Duchess
had come to represent many of the values of that often self-satisfied society, the artistic reflection of wealth, position, and power. That she could still be held hostage by a jailed international bandit subtly undermined such complacency. Threats, inducements, and punishment had all failed to loosen Worth’s tongue, or his grip on his only possession, and so, as the years of imprisonment crawled by, he continued to wage the strange campaign of defiance he could never win but refused to lose.

TWENTY-THREE

Alias Moriarty

I
n December 1893, just five months after Worth’s crimes were revealed, Professor James Moriarty, one of the most memorable antiheroes in literature, came into the world.

The English reading public found the
Pall Mall Gazette
account of Worth’s crimes at once terrifying and irresistible. Here was a crook so skilled that he could move in high society undetected, who could travel the world as a man of substance while coordinating his criminal empire, yet always managed to slip “
through the fingers of the police.” The notion had added piquancy at a time when the duality of man’s nature, thanks to Darwin, was a matter of hot debate. Just as the criminal lurked beneath the cloak of respectability, so too did the deliciously sinful, bestial side of human nature coexist with man’s finer, civilized instincts. Adam Worth, le Brigand International, was a creature straight out of Victorian fiction, and that, indeed, was where he was now headed.
The Pall Mall Gazette
had made Worth notorious; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would make that notoriety eternal.

There is no doubt that Conan Doyle based his portrait of Professor Moriarty, the evil genius and bitter foe of Sherlock Holmes, principally on the career of Adam Worth, although aspects of Moriarty’s character were doubtless drawn from various sources: his mathematical ability was apparently a reference to one of Doyle’s friends, Major General Drayson; some claim the criminal “abstract philosopher” is a reference to Friedrich Nietzsche, based on the misreading of that philosopher as the architect of racist totalitarianism and thus the root of all evil. Conan Doyle’s choice of name for his arch-criminal is believed to refer to one George Moriarty, a crook who featured briefly in the London papers in 1874; the author himself specifically compares Moriarty to Jonathan Wilde, an eighteenth-century crook.

But Adam Worth was Conan Doyle’s primary inspiration and Conan Doyle told others as much. “
The original of Moriarty was Adam Worth, who stole the famous Gainsborough, in 1876, and hid it for a quarter century, but even that master criminal might have taken lessons from the Moriarty of Holmes and Watson, a figure of colossal resource and malevolence,” observed Vincent Starrett, one of the earliest and most reliable of Sherlock Holmes scholars. In a footnote Starrett adds: “This was revealed by Sir Arthur in conversation with Dr. Gray Chandler Briggs [
a close friend of the author] some years ago.”

Holmes’s depiction of Moriarty describes precisely Worth’s position at the height of his prowess in London during the 1880s. “
The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him,” the detective tells his long-suffering sidekick. “He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker.”

When Sir Robert Anderson, head of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard, was asked “
who, in his estimation, was the cleverest and most resourceful criminal he had ever met,” he employed nearly the same words. “ ‘Adam Worth!’ he rapped out, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘He was the Napoleon of the criminal world. None other could hold a candle to him.’ ”

It is impossible to know whether Conan Doyle was echoing Anderson or the other way around, or neither: everyone who had achieved distinction in Victorian times became, by cliché, the Napoleon of Something. Certainly Conan Doyle knew and relied on Sir Robert Anderson for some of his background material, and the latter’s admiration for Worth’s criminal talents is well documented. “
Fancy the long sustained excitement of planning and executing crimes like Raymond’s,” he once remarked. “In comparison with such sport, hunting wild game is sport for savages; salmon shooting and grouse shooting for lunatics and idiots.”

The Moriarty described by Conan Doyle is physically very different from the man on whom he was modeled: “
He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head. He is clean shaven, pale, ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor in his features. His shoulders are rounded from much study, and his face protrudes forward, and is for ever slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion”—a far cry from the diminutive, mustachioed Worth. Moriarty is held responsible for “
cases of the most varying sorts—forgery cases, robberies, murders.” Worth, as we know, was a master practitioner of the first two, but shunned violence.

Conan Doyle next wrote about the evil professor in
The Valley of Fear
, a novel-length tale which was serialized in
The Strand Magazine
starting in September 1914. By this time, Worth’s criminal network and involvement in the Gainsborough theft had been fully established and widely reported, and it is more apparent than ever that Conan Doyle’s portrayal of Moriarty is firmly based on Worth, for he leaves numerous clues behind. The writer, like every other educated Victorian, had clearly followed the story of the theft of Gainsborough’s
Duchess
over the years. In 1891 he referred to the Duchess of Devonshire fashion in
A Case of Identity
, while
The Red Headed League
, published the same year, describes a robbery remarkably similar to Worth’s celebrated break-in at Boston’s Boylston Bank fifteen years earlier. But in
The Valley of Fear
(1914) there is, so to speak, physical evidence linking Worth to Moriarty. At the start of that tale, Holmes interrogates Inspector McDonald of Scotland Yard, who has interviewed Professor Moriarty and found him to be, despite Holmes’s warnings, “
a very respectable, learned and talented sort of man.” To prove how misguided is that impression, Holmes asks the policeman whether, during his conversation with Moriarty, he observed a picture hanging on the wall of the professor’s study.